Sorry

Reader Terry S. is a podcaster frustrated by a GarageBand limitation. He writes:

I create my podcasts in GarageBand and I generally like the program. One thing bugs me though. GarageBand will only export my podcasts as compressed audio files. I’d like to export my podcasts as uncompressed AIFF files so I can use other utilities that don’t work with MPEG-4 files to process them. But there doesn’t seem to be a way to do it. Like I say, I like GarageBand, but I may have to use something else if I can’t get around this.

It is annoying that GarageBand doesn’t offer an obvious option for exporting podcast projects as AIFF files. But the key word here is
obvious
. It can be done, but Apple doesn’t make it clear how.

After you’ve assembled all the audio bits of your podcast—but not added any “podcasty” stuff such as graphics and chapter markers—select the Podcast track at the top of the GarageBand window and press Command-Delete to remove it. When you do so, GarageBand will treat the project like a song rather than a podcast. For your purposes this means that when you click on the Share menu you’ll find that the
Send Podcast to iTunes
command changes to
Send Song to iTunes
. This is important because when GarageBand sends a podcast to iTunes, it does so as a .m4v file. When it sends a song to iTunes, it sends it as an AIFF file.

Once in iTunes you can locate the original file (Control-Click on the file and choose Show in Finder from the contextual menu) and have your way with it. After you’re processed it to your liking, create a new podcast project in GarageBand and drag the file into a track. Then add your podcasty bits and export it.

Why not just create a song project in the first place if you’re going to export your podcast as an AIFF file? Choosing a podcast project from the get-go provides you with that nice little podcast template—one that includes vocal tracks with the right effects already applied as well as the Jingles and Radio Sounds tracks that many podcasters find useful.

This is also a worthwhile technique when your podcast contains so many tracks that GarageBand bogs down. This technique allows you to reduce these multiple tracks into a single lossless track that maintains all the fidelity of the original, which, when you import it into a new GarageBand project, won’t be so taxing to your Mac.

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